Page 10 of Dragon's Golden Mate
Colette made a face. “Girl, you’ve told everyone and anyone who will listen, and maybe even some who won’t!”
“I’m excited!” Nia explained. “Several otherbands are playing who already have a following, and it could be a huge break for them. Anyway, Tina, I was wondering if he could post a flyer for the show here.”
Tina shrugged a little as she considered it. “Sure. Why not?”
Nia squealed. “Thank you! I want to help him get as much exposure as possible. I just know he’s going to make it big.”
Colette was pulling bundles of incense out of the box. “I guess you’d better get me his autograph so I can sell it for big bucks,” she retorted with a little smile.
They left the girls to run things, and Tina led them to a wooden door with raised panels. It was painted black and was hardly even noticeable. She opened it and stepped aside, making room for Kendrick and Maeve to enter before she shut the door behind them.
“Well, now.” Kendrick was surprised to find himself in what resembled a small and very old library. Cabinets lined the perimeter of the room, with shelves on every inch of wall space above them. These were laden with books of all kinds, many of them bound in leather. Lamps illuminated the corners of the room, and a large table took up thecenter. “When you said we were going to be in the back room, I was expecting a stock room with your extra inventory.”
Tina moved over to a shelf and began running her finger along a row of books. “I have one of those, too! This is a place for more elevated witches, if you will. Those who know a little bit more than basic spells. Anything I sell out front is safe for tourists to mess around with, whether they know what they’re doing or not.”
“I mentioned the church to my sister, Lucille,” Maeve told him. “She’ll check for any information at the library, but the books here are more like a library of the occult. Most of them were written by hand and are one-of-a-kind.”
“So how do we know where to start?” Kendrick peered at the spines of a few books, but some of them had faded and were hard to read.
“You leave that to me,” Tina said simply. She began laying books out on the table. “Have a seat.”
Two chairs were on this side of the table, so Kendrick pulled one out for Maeve before he took one for himself. He took one of the tomes Tina had set out. “Sacred Sites of Salem.That sounds promising.”
Before he knew it, he and Maeve were carefullypaging through numerous old books. A notebook and a pen appeared at his side, probably put there by Tina, and Kendrick was jotting down anything that seemed significant. He lost track of time as he pored over old stories and accounts.
“Listen to this.” He leaned over toward Maeve and read out loud. “Father Kinsella, newly appointed to the church, was said to be very happy with his new position. John, the groundskeeper, let him in to get himself situated and then went about caring for the lawn and flower beds. Only a short time later, Father Kinsella came running out through the front door. He pointed behind him and tried to speak to John, but all that came out of his mouth was gibberish. Father Kinsella ran down the street, his priestly robes flying behind him, and never returned.”
“Hm.” Maeve tapped the back end of her pen on her chin. “I wonder what he saw in there.”
“Kinsella is an Irish surname. I wonder how close he was to his roots and if perhaps he knew what the runes meant. That was decades ago, though. I don’t think we’d find him now.”
“Probably not,” Maeve agreed, “but look at this.” The crude, hand-drawn map she showed him was supposed to be a representation of the city, or at leastpart of it. Numerous blue lines were drawn across it. Several of them converged at the location of the church. “They’re supposed to be ley lines.”
“That would make sense, given my dragon’s reaction when I was there,” Kendrick said with a nod. “I do feel like it has to be more than that, though. I moved our whole clan here to account for shifting ley lines, so I know what those feel like.”
Maeve tapped her pen on her notebook. “That’s too bad. I was hoping it meant more.”
“Does it say what that star means?” Kendrick leaned close enough to point to the little blue star that was drawn at the location of the church, right where the lines converged. His eyes were focused on the book, but Maeve’s scent curled around him like a silk scarf. The brightness of lemon, then aromatic rosemary. Underneath it all was something deep and earthy, like patchouli or sandalwood.
“Let’s see.” Maeve flipped to the next page. Her eyes flicked as she scanned it. “Ah. Here. It just says, ‘a source of great power.’ That doesn’t tell us much.”
“Is this the place?” Tina had still been looking through the shelves, and now she turned around with what appeared to be an old photo album. She laid it on the table before them.
The sepia-toned photo looked like it was at leasta hundred years old. The church would’ve already been around for a while at that point, but the background was much different from what he’d seen the day prior. A large tree shaded one side of the building. The photo showed a grassy lawn surrounding it, but now, an asphalt parking lot took its place.
“It had a little more charm to it back then,” Kendrick noted.
“And there’s one of the gargoyles you mentioned.” Maeve pointed, careful not to touch the old picture.
“Wait a minute.” Kendrick brought the album closer. “That’s not where I saw it yesterday.”
“What?” Maeve looked at him and then back at the photo.
“I saw four of them.” He closed his eyes, recalling each one. “One was up there on the steeple, but it was on the west side looking down at the front doors. This is the same carving, but look. It’s facing south.”
“A prank?” Tina theorized. “Or maybe it got moved around during some sort of reconstruction or remodeling.”
Kendrick folded his arms in front of his chest and tried to think. “I would agree with you if I hadn’t seen what I saw yesterday.”
